CHIAVARI,
Italy – I first heard this story one very hot summer day when I
went with a friend of mine up to a rifugio high above the little town of
Cernobbio on Lake Como. We drove straight up the mountain for what seemed like
an hour, through a large pine forest, then round and round the hairpin bends
until finally we got to our destination.
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| The Italian-Swiss Border |
The
rifugio was a simple, rustic refuge/cafe that catered primarily to those who
like to hike up and down the mountains. I had never been up that high in the
mountains before and for me, a confirmed city girl, it was like a trip to the
moon. Even more strange was the fact that we were about 10 feet from the Swiss border.
We could have very easily walked into
Switzerland and no one would have been the wiser.
I
said that to the rifugio owner, and he smiled and asked if I had ever heard of
the “shoulder boys”. I shook my head no, and with that he pulled out a chair
and sat down and began telling us the story that I will now tell to you.
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| The Shoulder Boys Were More Than Boys |
It was an honor for a boy to be chosen to be a
“shoulder boy” for it was a job usually reserved for men, a profession handed
down from father to son since the late 1800’s. Depending on which side of the
law you were on, it was an honorable profession. Smuggling supported more than half the
families in the area and everyone in Como and in the towns along the lake knew
about the “shoulder boys”.
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| The Loads Were Heavy |
It
started during the second half of the 1800’s with coffee and sugar being brought
into Italy from Switzerland. Then, with
the outbreak of World War II, rice became the product of choice and sacks of
rice traveled from the rice fields of Lombardy up to Switzerland. The last
phase of the “shoulder boys” began after WWII when cigarettes became the hot commodity,
smuggled into Italy and sold on the black market. That business continued until
the 1970’s with the “shoulder boys” carrying the illegal goods up and down the
mountain trails, the merchandise ‘de
sfroos’ as they called it in the local dialect.
Each
man carried a backpack that weighed between thirty and forty kilos (66 to
88lbs). The backpacks were made from strong burlap material that had been waxed
to make them waterproof. There was always a separate compartment for the food
and whisky that would keep the boys going on their long and difficult journey.
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| The Mountains Were Steep |
They
could earn 60 or 70,000 lire a month, (about $50) which wasn’t a small amount
in those days when the average monthly salary for a worker was 40,000 (about
$30). But considering the dangers they faced it wasn’t all that much either. It
was difficult to be a smuggler. It was hard work, dangerous and illegal, but
everyone who could do it, did it. All
the men, that is. They would start working when they were about 12 -14 years
old, and worked as long as their bodies and health held out. The women helped too, but in another way. Their
job was to flirt with the financial police and find out which section of the
lake they were going to be moved to next. Valuable information when the danger
of going around a bend and coming face to face with the Guardia di Finanza was
a scary reality.
The
financial police were not really the bad guys and when they could they would
close an eye, or sometimes both eyes, and let the “shoulder boys” pass. After all, during the day the smugglers and
the financial police were neighbors, it was only at night that they were
enemies. But never true enemies. “Stop where you are” was what they would call
out when they would see a smuggler with a backpack strapped to his back. In the
best of cases the smuggler would escape with his entire load, in the worse of
cases he would escape, but without his load.
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| Cleaning the Mud off of his Burlap Shoes |
The
lake was always the final destination because that is where the boats that
transported the goods to the other side of the lake to be distributed were. The
rule was that the ‘boys’ had to deliver their backpacks directly to the boats
otherwise they would not get the 8,000 lire (about $5.50) that they were paid
for each load they carried.
The
smugglers knew every path and trail from Lake Como to Switzerland. It was
essential to be able to move during the night as if it were day, relying on
memory and instincts. As they made their way through the mountains they would leave
the usual paths and head into the woods, always traveling at night in order not
to be seen. Not only was there danger from wild animals like roaming packs of
wild boars and wolves and problems with the weather, there was also the problem
of the border guards who were different from the Guardia di Finanza, but whose
job it was to arrest people sneaking over the borders. But wind and rain, snow
and ice, nothing stopped the “shoulder boys” from delivering their contraband
and collecting the money for their efforts.
The “shoulder
boys” would leave in the middle of the night, around 2 or 3 in the morning, and
start the climb up through the woods with their heavy backpacks strapped to
their backs and the financial police over their shoulder. They would arrive at
the pre-agreed to meeting point in Switzerland at about 8 in the morning. There they would sit and have a caffe-latte
to warm up and wait for their contact person to arrive with the goods they were
to transport back to Italy.
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| Soft and Silent Burlap Shoes |
Around
2 in the afternoon they would start off again. Just before they got to the Italian border
they would stop and wait for it to get dark. Then they would cross the border
and head down into the valley, walking all night and finally arriving at the
lake shortly before dawn.
They lived in dangerous times with no guarantees that a ‘shoulder boy’ would make it
back alive. The most dangerous problem, however,
was not the financial police or border patrols, but facing the mountain in the
dark with its jagged rocks and landslides and the deep crevices that were
impossible to see in the middle of the night. And during the winter the mountain was even
more dangerous when ice and snow made some paths impossible to follow and the ‘shoulder
boys’ had to forge new trails and face possible avalanches.
There
is a lullaby that goes: “Ninna Nanna, sleep my little one, your father has a
bag on his back, and he climbs through the night, pray the moon doesn’t give
him away, pray the stars show him the way, pray the path brings him home.”
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| Caught by Swiss Border Patrol - 1898 |
The “shoulder
boys” and the police were the stuff of fairy tales for the children and the
stories of narrow escapes or even deaths were told over and over again in many
homes in the small towns along the shores of Lake Como. Between 1883 and 1884
the local newspaper, La Provincia di Como, published a serialized story about
the Smuggler and the Financial Police. The stories still make up much of the
tradition of Lake Como and now you know the story too.
Unless otherwise noted photos
are from NBR.
